Mononoke 2005: Gods Lake Preserve
by Gandalf the Beige
Summary: Conduits come and go, but the spirits that use them last forever. How else would the forest be so well grown after only 520 years? Five explorers are about to discover that the Gods Lake Wilderness Preserve holds more than just ecology.


Mononoke 2005: Gods Lake Preserve

Disclaimer: I own nothing in this fic except for the Japanese Naturalist and Historian, the American surveyor/cartographer, the French cameraman and a Kenyan hired for his tracking skills and a REALLY BIG GUN. (Slight crossover with JURRASSIC PARK)

Description: With the Japanese Government preparing a proposal to change the status of the Gods Lake forest in Northern Honshu from Wilderness Preserve to National Monument, a team is set out to document the strange phenomena that prompted this change.

Authors note: for the purposes of this story, everyone will be speaking English. And I need to use the creators name, but not in vain.

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Tokyo University, Ecology Department, late spring, 2005 

A finger traced a route on a map taped to a table.

"Okay… so if we stop in Sendai we can refuel and pick up some extra supplies, and if we make Sakata by nightfall, get a hotel and leave at dawn, keeping Mt. Chokai on our right, then we should make Akita by 9 AM the day after tomorrow. Any questions?" Jacob Matthews, U of Wisconsin graduate with a Major in Cartography, looked upon the small ensemble sitting in the even smaller office with the hopeful smile typical of someone that expected an answer.

Jean-Louis Bouvier, their cinematographer, sat behind the only other table in the room, engrossed in the meticulous polishing of his lenses while an assortment of digital and film cameras lay scattered on the surface. He said nothing. The young American looked to the right, where sat junior staff member and graduate of the faculty of Ecology Hayao Kanzaki, and his girlfriend… well his fiancé to be all socially proper about it, Hitomi Takahashi, the teams historian. They seemed to understand perfectly.

"Yes actually. After we get there, how the hell are we going to get into the interior? Motorized vehicles aren't allowed inside the preserve and from what I heard, bringing pack horses along would just about be ringing the bloody dinner bell." Asked a new arrival to the tiny office, who had incidentally just brought lunch. It turned out that the restaurant down the street was out of sashimi, so tuna and asparagus sushi had to do. Richard Muldoon was undoubtedly one of the best trackers this side of the Congo Basin, and had joined the team in order to surpass his brother Roberts' work on Isla Nublar… work that had killed him under mysterious circumstances. The official report had said a tiger had mauled him, but no big cat could have realistically left the kind of marks that were on his remains.

"That parts easy," said Jacob as he reached down behind the desk and pulled up several pairs of steel-toed boots by the laces. "We hike in and whatever we take has to fit on a pack. Oh, and I got those cartridges you asked for." He unlocked a drawer and handed Muldoon, who had been dreading the prospect of carrying in half a ton of equipment without some decent horsepower, the box of large elephant rounds (for a magnum, not the old smoothbores). The tracker inspected the box, but frowned with just a hint of disappointment. ". 458s? That's all you could find?"

Matthews looked a bit perplexed. "I figured those would be enough. Anything bigger and I would have had to go through the military. What are you expecting to find in that forest anyway?" "Boars, wolves, bears… this preserve is said to have the last sizable population of brown bears on the island. And the sheer size! Some of the reports compare the size of the average boar to that of a small cow, and then into elephant size on the larger ones!" Jean-Louis, having been distracted from his polishing by this description, gulped audibly. His uncle had taken him hunting in the marshes bordering the Camargue plain in the south of France once, and he remembered clearly how dangerous an enraged boar could be; the scars had never fully faded.

"Elephant sized boars? Have you been helping the Biology juniors bleach rat skeletons for their year-end projects again, 'cause I told you they use some pretty strong stuff down there." Said Mr. Kanzaki as he pulled himself away from Ms. Takahashi's absolutely _fascinating_ (it really was) lecture on the history of the forest that now made up the preserve. "Well, not recently at any rate, though I do admit that it does sound a _bit _unbelievable, but that's what I heard, and they said that the big ones are a bit… supernatural." "The big boars?" "The biggest examples of all species. They even say that they've seen… apes in this forest. I don't know if that's true, seems unlikely, but that's only the more mundane stuff. I won't even go into the ghosts and spirits!"

Jacob nearly choked on a piece of cooked asparagus at that. "Spirits?" he asked weakly. "That's what they say." Replied Muldoon, who was now on the phone trying to get permission to get some of those new clean burning bio-diesels fitted for the trip, not so easy when ones grasp of Japanese doesn't include the language of bureaucracy.

Matthews and Kanzaki shared a sceptical glance that seemed to ask each other: "Is it too late to back out of this trip honourably?" and "Are you sure about this guy?"

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Ah (breaths deeply and sighs), the first edit. Always a joy. 


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